£370,000 Claim against public services employer

I am not sure whether you read, but recently a hospital Chief Executive claimed for compensation because he could no longer work due to stress and he was awarded a lump sum of £370,000 plus £24,000 a year for life. You may also have heard about the millions of pounds which are spent by the Department of Health and the various police forces to their former employees under their injury schemes and so many more. Whilst we could have a debate on whether it is right for people to claim against their public services employer I wanted actually to ask a different question . . .

Who are the people who award these compensation payments? Who appoints them, supervises them and gives them instructions? At the end of the day these compensation committees distribute tax payers’ money so I think there should be far more transparency in how they operate and who they are.

Another reason why these questions are more pertinent (it is not necessarily because one wants to save money) but it appears that compensation schemes awarded to British soldiers are much much lower and clearly that’s not right.

Let us know if you agree or not. Compensation is always going to be tricky because there is no right or wrong answer, but surely there should be some consistency and some common sense, otherwise we are all going to stress out.

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